Cloud computing is now an essential part of almost every industry in the world. We all use multiple applications powered by cloud services for communication, entertainment, data store, and much more. Cloud computing models can be divided into three broad categories, each with its own advantages and disadvantages for different types of uses.
The role of cloud computing
The three different cloud computing models play slightly different roles for customers. Cloud computing has become an essential part of so many applications because it presents an easier and more efficient way for businesses to deliver services through the internet. Using a cloud model means that instead of using your own hardware, your business leverages the cloud for its computing and infrastructure needs.
Before the era of cloud computing every business had to handle its own servers, network infrastructure, hardware, software, and much more. This meant that any business that wanted to deliver its services to customers all over the world would have to make a large investment to purchase the hardware and servers, develop the architecture, and then continuously maintain all the hardware and software.
In cloud computing models the businesses do not have to worry about any of those things. They use cloud services such as AWS by Amazon, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. Instead of buying your own servers and network hardware, you put your service on Amazon, Microsoft, or Google’s servers.
There are several advantages to this approach. These service providers have large data centers across the world and can handle a lot of traffic. Cloud services are also significantly cheaper to use – the economies of scale mean that everything is cheaper for these service providers. These services are also scalable, allowing you to increase the amount of computing power and storage available to you with just a few clicks.
Cloud Computing Models
There are 3 main types of cloud computing models:
- SaaS
- IaaS
- PaaS
Software as a Service (SaaS)
SaaS is easily the most well-known cloud computing model and it predates the term cloud computing itself. In software as a service computing models, you use a service that is being hosted on the cloud. Email services are a good example of SaaS. Instead of running your own mail server and accessing emails through the Outlook application installed on your computer, you can use Gmail from a browser. Salesforce, Slack, Dropbox, and Jira are all examples of SaaS solutions.
SaaS can be considered the most basic form of cloud computing because you do not have any control over the hardware or infrastructure powering the service. You cannot ask Gmail to use faster servers for your email – you can only control how you use the email service. The advantage of SaaS is its simplicity. Most SaaS applications will run on any browser with access to the internet.
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
IaaS is what most people think of when the term cloud computing is used. In IaaS, your business leases the infrastructure necessary to power your services. AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Computing are all examples of IaaS. When you subscribe to these services you tell them which servers you want to use, how much bandwidth you need, what type of memory is required, and so on. IaaS is designed to replace the infrastructure a business needs to put in place completely.
IaaS has been a game-changer for e-commerce. When you look at the era before IaaS became mainstream you can see that it was almost impossible for a small or medium sized business to compete in anyway with larger businesses. No small business could afford to invest millions of dollars on purchasing, implementing, and maintaining the infrastructure necessary for delivering services to a global audience. Now the process is trivial – there is no need to make a large investment. You simply start slow and increase the infrastructure available to you as your business grows. The cost of IaaS is exponentially lower than maintaining your own infrastructure.
Platform as a Service (PaaS)
PaaS is a cloud computing model in which you use a cloud platform to power your applications. The key difference between IaaS and PaaS is that in IaaS you choose the hardware that will best serve the application you want to run while PaaS is infrastructure agnostic. Imagine that you were not concerned by how many servers need to be leased and what processing power is required – your only concern is that your application always works efficiently. In the PaaS model you simply upload your application to the cloud and everything else is handled by the cloud provider.
You can develop a full solution in Visual Studio and upload it to AWS Elastic Beanstalk, which is a PaaS that runs on AWS. Everything (load balancing, scaling, capacity provisioning) is handled by AWS while you focus on your application. The advantage of PaaS is that it gives your developers the freedom to scale applications and accomplish much more without worrying about whether the infrastructure will be able to handle it all.
Hybrid Clouds
SaaS, IaaS, and PaaS represent the three types of cloud computing models, but it is also possible to integrate your personal network with a cloud. Microsoft Azure is a very common hybrid cloud model being used in many Fortune 500 companies because of how easily it integrates with Windows and Office.
In the hybrid model you selectively keep some data and processes on your own servers while using the cloud for the rest of the data and processes. Hybrid clouds are popular in businesses and government agencies that handle sensitive data. Such businesses and agencies do not want to upload their data to the cloud, but they also want access to some of the features of the cloud.
The hybrid model can also help with scalability. Many businesses have spikes in their traffic. Imagine that NFL wanted to broadcast games to viewers using their own infrastructure. While most games average around 16 million viewers, the Super Bowl attracts more than 100 million viewers. They would thus need to create a network infrastructure that can handle 100 million viewers even though they only reach that viewership on one day. In a hybrid model the NFL could only create the infrastructure which would support 16 million viewers and use the cloud to meet the increased demand during the Super Bowl.
These are just some of the ways cloud computing is being offered to businesses. As technology progresses further, we will see the rise of new computing models and services.
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